Koss JR900 Wireless Headphones

Recently, we tested the excellent Sennheiser RS 220 , a wireless pair of headphones intended for home use, particularly with home theater set-ups. The RS 220's $600 price, though, is enough to send chills down your spine. The Koss JR900 Wireless Headphones, in comparison, are a downright bargain at $399.99 (direct). The $200 price difference, it turns out, is in place for a reason. While the RF-based JR900 is capable of delivering quality audio with a nice balance of bass and highs, it suffers from some serious interference that is often as loud as the music.

Design
At first glance, the JR900's simple design is quite similar to that of the RS 220. A black plastic base acts as a stand for the headphones when they are charging, and a wireless transmitter when they are in use. Your audio source needs to be connected to the base?an RCA cable with a 3.5mm jack and ?-inch and RCA adapters is provided to connect to the RCA outputs on the rear panel of the base. Next to these outputs is a connection for the included power adapter, and along the side panels, a connection for the recharging cable and a channel selector with three small switches that can be set to various combinations to operate over various wireless frequencies. On the front face, a power switch shifts between On (red) and Off (green?the mode used during recharging of the headphones), next to the large volume knob.

The headphones themselves are a large, circumaural (over-the-ear) pair with black plastic, little embellishment, and plenty of cushy padding on the earcups and headband. They are comfortable enough to be worn for hours at a time. The left ear houses the dual volume knobs, which can be adjusted individually for the left and right ears, or moved simultaneously together. There's also a Mono/Stereo switch, and on the right ear, the On/Off switch and the recharging cable connector.

Some design shortcomings are expected given the relatively low price for this type of model?the base and headphones are made with unusually lightweight plastic that feels a bit flimsy. On the headphones, this is actually a great thing: the lightness makes them exceedingly comfortable. For the transmitter base, which always must be connected via cable to the sound source, its light weight is, literally, its downfall. It's easy to topple the base?the connecting audio cable is not very long, and the slightest level of strain on the cable can pull on the base enough to knock it over or tilt it. Alas, this is a relatively minor annoyance compared with the JR900's?other issues.

The Sennheiser RS 220 automatically recharges when it is placed on its stand, while the JR900's stand is more for show and storage. In order to charge the headphones, you need to connect to a cable from the base. This is not really a problem, but an example of the RS 220's more-thoughtful design.

The back panel of the base offers far fewer connection options than the RS 220?it only has one, so if you want to switch to a source, you must do so by disconnecting the cable, whereas the RS 220's inputs can be switched between with a Source button on the front panel. Again, that's what you might expect from an option that costs $200 more, so most of the quibbles with the JR900's design are more or less forgivable. Unfortunately, the performance problems aren't.

Performance
Let's discuss some positives first. The JR900 can sound great at specific volumes, with rich bass and clear mids and highs. Unfortunately, there's no way to use them as a wired headphone pair, so the audio performance is at the mercy of the wireless transmission. In order to get solid sound, you have to get at least two, perhaps three, volume levels exactly right?more on that in a moment.

Another strong point is range. The headphones, which use RF rather than Bluetooth, aren't subject to Bluetooth's 30-foot transmission range. The stream never ceased for us, even from about 70 feet away. However, some other factors can cause drop-out, like adjusting the volume.

The transmitter volume and the headphone volumes are independent of each other. We heard the least interference with the base volume at nearly maximum and the headphone volume at much lower levels. Generally, the louder the headphone volume, the louder the interference. The third level that can come into play is your sound source's volume. If it's a DVD player, there won't be any volume adjustments, but if it's your phone or computer, you'll also have those levels to manage.

At maximum volume, using a computer as the sound source, some bad things happen with the JR900. It distorts on deep bass tracks, though it's hard to tell what is distorting when there are two different potential culprits?the transmitter and the headphones. At different combinations of volume levels, the distortion burden seemed to switch from one to another, but never disappear. Also, when adjusting the headphone volume to higher levels, we did experience drop-out at times.

But the main issue was the RF interference, which, in my tests, sounded like hiss and intermittent static, often louder than the music, and occurring to some degree at most volume levels. Busy, intense rock mixes seemed to do the best job of masking the interference, but sparse classical pieces, like Messiaen's "Turangal?la-Symphonie," might as well have been playing over a poorly tuned AM radio station.

The manual comes with a list of five different switch combinations on the transmitter to change the operational frequency of the system in the 900MHz range?but none of the five channels made any difference in our testing. The system picked up interference from the computer we were using, even when its Wi-Fi was disabled. Using an iPhone and a Marantz stereo receiver as the sound source made no difference, either. Modern homes have several possible sources of interference, but while the Sennheiser RS 220 never suffered from interference issues in our test, the Koss system was highly susceptible.

This is a true shame, as the headphones themselves seem quite capable of producing an enjoyable audio experience, but the transmitter won't really allow this to happen, unless you tweak the various volumes to just the right spot, and listen to music that is loud enough to block out the static in the background.

It seems obvious that Sennheiser's $600 option would outduel Koss's $400, and the JR900's interference issues make that price seem extremely high. When you consider that there are Bluetooth options that can stream without any interference issues?and for less than half the price?it makes it hard to recommend the JR900.

The $500 Sennheiser MM 550-X ?is a quality Bluetooth headphone pair priced at the halfway mark between the RS 220 and the JR900, but if these are all out of range, consider some Bluetooth options like the $150 Phiaton PS 20 BT . It's not intended for home theater use, but will stream from most phones and computers, and the upside is it can do so anywhere since there's no base. If you're on a tighter budget but want still want wireless audio, the $70 Bluetooth Outdoor Technology DJ Slims , is a surprisingly solid option.

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